Ooo! Shiny!

(From Disney/Pixar's Finding Nemo - the trench scene)...

Dory: “Nice trench…Hello? (echoes)…OK, let’s go!”

Marlin: “No.  Bad trench, bad trench.  Come on.  We’re gonna swim over this thing.”

Dory: “Whoa, whoa partner.  Little red flag going up.  Something’s telling me we should swim through it, not over it.”

Marlin: “Are you even looking at this thing?  It’s got death written all over it.”

Dory: “I’m sorry, but I really, really, really think we should swim through.”

Marlin: “And I’m really, really done talking about this.  Over we go.”

Dory: “Come on, trust me on this.”

Marlin: “Trust you?”

Dory: “Yes, trust – it’s what friends do.”

Marlin: “Look!  Something shiny!”

Dory: “Where?”

Marlin: “Oh, it just swam over the trench!  Come on!  We’ll follow it!”

Dory: “OK!”

(to watch the above conversation from Finding Nemo, hold ctrl key while clicking on link) http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=y0LGL5vVP7w

Anyone who’s seen Disney/Pixar’s animated film, Finding Nemo, knows how this scene ends up playing out – by the fun-loving, but very forgetful Dory, allowing Marlin’s deceit of “something shiny” to distract her into going his way rather than the way in which she had been instructed to go, and they then find themselves smack dab in the middle of trouble, amongst a swarm of jellyfish.  How many times have we, as believers, done this very same thing?  God gives us an instruction which we know we should follow, and sometimes even intend on following, but then Satan dangles “a shiny” in front of us and we, just like Dory, find ourselves deceived into choosing a different way; or to put it another way, we choose our way.

In this world, we are constantly being bombarded with all kinds of things that can lure us away from our “East Australian current,” otherwise known as God’s plan/way.  God’s word warns us in 1 John 2:15-17, “Do not love the world or anything in the world.  If anyone loves the world, the love of the Father is not in him.  For everything in the world – the cravings of sinful man, the lust of his eyes and the boasting of what he has and does – comes not from the Father but from the world.  The world and its desires pass away, but the man who does the will of God lives forever.”  While I have found that there are many “shiny,” worldly things that can and have distracted me, the main one would definitely be in making and keeping my own little world – my home – “shiny.”

Those who know me well know that I am a self-confessed neat freak.  I love to create, clean, organize, and systematize everything, and sometimes even everyone!  Keeping my world “shiny” is such a distraction, that often times I lose focus on everything else in life – including God…or maybe I should say, especially God.  While I’ve never actually been diagnosed, many of those around me would likely label me OCD…I would have to say that I agree, though I don’t necessarily think of it as “obsessive compulsive disorder.”  I like to think of it as “obsessive controlling desires” because my “need to clean” definitely stems from my deep rooted “need to control.”

Whenever things aren’t going my way in life, whether big or small, it manifests itself through the frantic and obsessive perfecting of my surroundings.  You can always tell how “in control” of my life I feel based off of how clean and orderly my house is.  I guess it’s my way of grabbing hold of what I feel I can control when my life feels out of control.  Somehow I’ve gotten it into my head that if everything in my immediate surroundings is perfect, then everything is OK because I’m now in control.  The more I have grown in my walk with God, the more I’ve come to realize that this is just a self-defense illusion very well crafted by our ever so deceitful nemesis, Satan…the problem is, if I really believe this to be true, which I do, then why haven’t I stopped? Why do I frantically continue to try to maintain control? Why have I yet to LET IT GO?  Well, a week ago today, I set off on a venture to do just that!

As Melisa Taylor’s online Bible study of the book, “Let. It. Go.,” by Karen Ehman points out, “The world is full of shiny things begging for our attention.  What are the things in your life that have turned into controlling tangents?  Let’s help each other break just one!”

“…let us throw off everything that hinders and the sin that so easily entangles, and let us run with perseverance the race marked out for us.  Let us fix our eyes on Jesus, the author and perfecter of our faith…” ~Hebrews 12:1-2   

“Set your minds on the things above, not on earthly things.  For you died, and your life is now hidden with Christ in God.” ~Col 3: 2-3